Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday October 01, 2010 @11:29PM
from the sweet-zombie-reagan dept.

gzipped_tar writes
"According to Spiegel Online, 'A new computer game where players assume the roles of border guards and shoot people trying to escape from communist East Germany has unleashed a storm of controversy in Germany. The game's creator says he wanted to teach young people about history, but he has been accused of glorifying violence. ... The name of the multi-player FPS game, 1,378 (kilometers), was inspired by the length of the border between East and West Germany. ... [Players] choose between the roles of the border guards or would-be escapees: the escapee only has one goal — to get over the wall, but the border guard has more options, and can shoot or capture the escapee. He can also swap sides and try to clamber over the border defenses himself.' By choosing to play the border guard and kill the escapee, the player would win an in-game medal from the government of East Germany. But then the guard would time-travel forward to the year 2000, where he would have to stand trial. Jens Stober, 23, designed the game as a media art student at the University of Design, Media and Arts in Karlsruhe. He said that his intention was to teach young people about German history."

Actually, sometimes you need to leave "tact" aside and actually teach history.

This one is pretty clear - you can be in the role of attempting to escape, or see what it was like for the guards. TFA finally gets around to pointing out that players who choose to shoot and kill those who attempt escape face the consequences for their actions by having their character stand trial later for the crime. They also give the choice of killing or not killing.

Too many people want to put an entire discussion into pure binary good-and-evil, or rewrite the history books in many cases. It doesn't help. And you can certainly make a real simulation of a tough situation without "glorifying" violence.

Some ideas are not effectively conveyed through the language of entertainment. Sometimes the mode of learning conveys a stronger message than the content of the lesson. Worse than rewriting history is to trivialize it. Occasionally we have good reason to rewrite history, such as when new evidence is presented; but only tyrants and fools frame history as a burlesque.

I disagree, I think that a "game" is an extremely effective way of conveying the true horror of history. You can show people movies, you can have them to read books and sit while a teacher lectures, and they can find some way of going into dummy mode for it all.

A videogame as media for this kind of message does not need to be fun to be effective. Actually if anything it would be extremely effective to have people play a game where they are basically horrified at their own actions and disgusted by continuing to "win". What better way to get the horror of this across than to make the player as uncomfortable with their actions as possible?

I think that a "game" is an extremely effective way of conveying the true horror of history.

If it was, it wouldn't be a game. One of the defining attributes of a game is that it has clearly defined, limited, reachable goals. It is at best a simplification of the real world, more commonly it's just a way to have fun incorporating real-world themes.

There's really no more reason why a kid should be more horrified at playing this game than playing Dungeon Keeper - unless he knows exactly how historically accura

>>>Sometimes the mode of learning conveys a stronger message than the content of the lesson.

Bullshit. At the end of the game the murderous guard gets hung (or life imprisonment). How is this not teaching a lesson about the consequences of shooting innocent people trying to escape to freedom? Also I don't think the game is intended to entertain, but to let people put themselves in that time period, like the holodeck did in Star Trek. Its the old "walk in another man's shoes" method of learning.

1) Shoot the civilians with gusto. Get promoted, work your way up through the ranks, and come to an unhappy ending in 20 years.2) Refuse to follow orders. Your boss eventually figures out that too many civilians are escaping under your watch and says "You're not doing your job. It's not merely legal to shoot. It's illegal not to shoot", and throws you in jail for the next 20 years. You're released from prison in post-reunification as a broken old man.3) Figure out how few civilians you can shoot and still keep yourself out of jail - both during the course of your 20-year career with the DDR border patrol, and during the post-reunification era.

The horror of totalitarianism isn't the psychopath gleefully massacring civilians, nor is it the heroic figure who stands up for his beliefs only to find himself in front of a firing squad. They've found a way to make it worthwhile, but heroes and villains are both outliers.

The horror of totalitarianism is that it makes life downright miserable for the 99.999% of us poor schmucks who spend their lives as nervous wrecks trying to avoid the outliers on either end of the ethical spectrum. Impress that upon a kid, and you might change his thinking: It's not 20 years of "How much good can I get away with before getting caught?", but "What's the minimum amount of evil I have to do today to avoid being tortured or killed?"

Because games get just a little too close for comfort for most people. They want to be taught the lessons of history, but it has to be comfortable and simplified, even if the facts are painful and complex.

If a kid would start out playing this for fun and ends up feeling bad in his stomach realizing the reality behind it, the game has done it's job.

Problem is that people accept books or movies that make them feel negative at the end, they don't accept this from games.

This game about the iron curtain is in Germany. Perhaps they have stronger feelings about it then an American?

How would an American feel about a TRUE colonization game? One were mass slaughter of the natives and slavery are put on the foreground? Funny how those important elements of American history did NOT make it into the game. Wonder why?

Germany is still split over the unification. It has got the western half an absolute fortune, the eastern half is s

There are millions of Germans who believe they are VICTIMS... yeah, it is not like Germany did anything to deserve its treatments post WW2.

Germany did plenty. But there are millions of Germans that never supported the Nazi regime or launching a world war or genocide or anything of the sorts. And on top of that they ended up behind the iron curtain, divided from the rest of their people and under the reign of the Soviet Union which was furious about the bloodbath German troops had caused. I'm not trying to defend anything of what Nazi Germany did, but in any war there will be many people on all sides that feel they didn't deserve it. Any of it.

you mean Sid Meier's Colonization? [wikipedia.org] Slaughter of the Indians is a pretty important part of the game, and slavery (it's been a while since I played, the game features "indentured servants" but kinda've glosses over slavery as a whole) - 4X games don't really have the same impact as first-person shooters though.

Is Inglorious Basterds popular in Israel? I've always been curious about that.

I was wondering the same thing. The only US colonization game I can think of offhand at all is Oregon Trail, though I don't see how slavery would have significantly contributed to it at all. The slaughter of natives would certainly be more relevant, at least.

There is a clear fundamental difference. In books and film you're passively watching someone else engage in those actions. When it's a game YOU are the one making the decision. You are the one who choose to play the game, who choose to shoot those people. It may all be fantasy but for a lot of people the situation is quite different. And this will become a more significant problem as games grow increasingly realistic.

It would be interesting to see if the psychological response is different for someone watch

every generation.every single generation decides that the modes of entertainment of their own generation were obviously fine since they grew up fine but this generation?this generations new forms of entertainment are going to destroy the minds of the young!this time!this time we're going to see it turning them into devil worshipers or canibals or murderers because *insert any difference between the older forms of entertainment and this one*

Catastrophists being wrong does not imply that new generations aren't heavily influenced by media. Like their fathers, and grandpas since the movie and radio era.

Recognizing game from real life does not imply that gaming has no influence on the brain. Like any other kind of activity or exercise the body adapts to perform it better. So the DSP-like capacities of the brain get stimulated. It's improbable that there are no other repercussions in brain activity.

There are (fiction) films and books about Aushwitz. If those forms of entertainment are acceptable, why not a game?

I haven't read any fictional novels about Aushwitz. But personally, I don't consider the non-fiction book Night or the semi-fictional movie Schindler's List to be entertainment. They are not entertaining. They may be great works of art, they are deeply moving, but they are not entertaining. The Holocaust Museum is a fantastic museum, but you don't go there if you want to be entertained, and

There are (fiction) films and books about Aushwitz. If those forms of entertainment are acceptable, why not a game?

Because games are crass, uncouth and juvenile, and are played by people of the same inclination; at least, that's the situation as far as the baby boom generation is concerned. To them, only movies are cool and sophisticated. And anything by that Spielburg guy who made that cool Jaws film they liked in the 70s has got to be classified as art, because he's really good.

whilst letting the player make the right choices will not teach the player much if anything

What the fuck?So your problem with this is that the player can choose *not* to shoot the escapee?

Especially since the game ends with it. It's like sentencing the person to go to jail for half a minute

And a book that ends similarly is better how?It's a game.Do you want it to give the player an electric shock the player when they do something wrong or what?

All it does is tell a story and give the player some choices in the story.Make the good choices the story ends well.Make the bad choices and the story tells of short term rewards and long term consequences.

Then you know very little about games. Melodrama has been part of games for over a decade: it's the standard narrative stance in Japanese RPGs. More recently, a game which dealt with heart-wrenching emotions was Heavy Rain (the English version marred by terrible voice acting, unfortunately.) Rod Humble's "The Marriage" and Jason Roehrer's "Passage" are melodramatic at the level of gameplay, too.

There is also a growing body of work that deals with difficult topics in games, from Brenda Brathwaite's "Train" t

Dungeon Keeper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Keeper [wikipedia.org] was about as close as game makers got to that and it was done as a comedy, nobody really complained. I wonder how say Dungeon Keeper 3 would be received now considering the substantial improvement in the quality of graphics since version 2.

Jens Stober, 23, is currently occupied with making his next game, Auschwitz Online ready for the close beta stage.

That being said: there's thousands of tragic events troughout history that is or have been turned into entertainment. Or even better, is so obscure that even if they were turned into entertainment people would think they were based on pure fiction.
But of course, some dead people are more equal than other and deserve more respect amirite?

I can play as a Nazi U-Boat captain blasting civilian vessels under the noses of their escorts in Silent Hunter (and a hundred other sub sims). I can play a knight of Christendom annihilating towns and cities through the Middle East in Medieval: Total War (and a hundred other medieval themed games). Or I can play as a US (and sometimes even VC) soldier rampaging through the jungle of Vietnam, in a war that claimed some 3 million civilian lives, in Battlefield Vietnam (and a great many others).

TFA finally gets around to pointing out that players who choose to shoot and kill those who attempt escape face the consequences for their actions by having their character stand trial later for the crime. They also give the choice of killing or not killing.

The East German at the Wall was chosen for his absolute loyalty and obedience to the State.

Not to mention that he was in immeadiate danger of being shot out-of-hand as a traitor if he let someone make it through.

Not only have there been prosecutions, but these cases are HUGE in modern criminal law academia, as they touched on fundamental questions of criminal responsibility and legality. They were fundamental in setting the bases of the contemporary discussion about human rights and the criminal persecution of state sponsored acts.

In very simple terms, the problem in terms of criminal theory is that these people committed acts that were not typified as crimes under the legal systems that was in force when they were committed, so their prosecution _and conviction_ had a tremendous impact in the modern understanding of the legality principle, which is a fundamental concept in any criminal law system, and in criminal law theory.

Though I'm not sure how much it's going to reflect history when I set the escapee to god mode. Unless of course anyone has heard stories of an invulnerable air walking no clipping escape from east germany destroying guards left and right. I'm sure it probably happened sometime even if no one reported it.

Though to be fair - don't be carried away, the consequences are really nil, zilch, nada. The actions...could still be presented to the player in a really "fun" way (as far as FPP shooters go). The whole experience would then be painful basically only if one already has such outlook.

If that's the case, the whole deal with standing trial starts to look just like an excuse...

And there are certainly ways to convey all the dillemas faced by people back then in a much more tactful way (while still "entertaining")

Since A. it does not force you to kill the escapees and B. gives you a bad ending for doing so I don't think the courts would decide that it glorifies violence. Of course the tabloids can claim what they want, as can the politicians but only a court decision can result in an actual ban or punishment.

This one is pretty clear - you can be in the role of attempting to escape, or see what it was like for the guards. TFA finally gets around to pointing out that players who choose to shoot and kill those who attempt escape face the consequences for their actions by having their character stand trial later for the crime. They also give the choice of killing or not killing.

I'm sorry, what crime are you talking about? The border guards did nothing illegal as far as the GDR law is concerned, since they were mili

I'm sorry, what crime are you talking about? The border guards did nothing illegal as far as the GDR law is concerned, since they were military personnel whose service consisted of preventing people to escape by any means necessary.

Putting them on a FRG trial many years afterwards is simply pure nonsense to satisfy crazy mobs. FRG law didn't apply in that region back then.

So, you have no problems with the gassing of Jews in the camps, either?

Putting people from another state under trial using a juridical system outside of its jurisdiction does not make sense; it's a sham to justify oppression or murder, and people that feel they were oppressed need to oppress their oppressors to feel good again.

Whether the people did dubious things from a morality point of view is irrelevant. Morality is relative, and has as much its place in justice as religion does.But war is quite nonsense anyway. Brainwashing of the winner has been fairly efficient, and peo

"By choosing to play the border guard and kill the escapee, the player would win an in-game medal from the government of East Germany. But then the guard would time-travel forward to the year 2000, where he would have to stand trial."Explain to me what part of this doesn't have tact. A lot of people will probably object to killing civilians, but the killing of innocent civilians IS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE TIME AND PLACE IN WHICH THIS GAME IS SET. There isn't any way around this. Either you want to

Ah but the country that passed those laws was considered an illegal Soviet occupation by the neighboring country that it later became a part of. And said neighboring country does not allow the death penalty under any circumstances while having no movement restriction across the border of the occupation zone.

Ah but the country that passed those laws was considered an illegal Soviet occupation by the neighboring country that it later became a part of.

The Nazi regime that preceded it was also considered an illegal occupation by the neighboring country that it later became a part of. Evidence includes the forbidding of the manji symbol on children's toys, as well as the classification of all interactive simulations as children's toys.

Yeah, and technically all the jews that Hitler murdered (yeah, different time period, I know) were all criminals.

Of course, we generally don't accept the definition of "criminal" as defined by MASS MURDERING FUCKHEADS. Therefore, those people were NOT criminals. They were innocent civilians regardless of what the oppressive, illegal, government classified them as.

No. History must be taught without "tact" or other forms of distortion. Tact becomes "political correctness". Political correctness becomes bias. Bias begets little changes in the way history is reported. Little changes give wrong impressions. Wrong impressions create bigger biases. And so on.

History needs to be taught as factually as possible. NO "tact", no "political correctness", no "Democrats or Republicans". Just facts. Those are the only things that will help us through problems of the future. Tact

Abject fucking bullshit. Germans aren't trying to forget or ignore anything. Germans society is acutely aware of German history. I take it you are not from Germany. I live in Germany (in the same city as the writer of the game in question).

Coincidentally: one of the voices of critique directed at the game (was in the submission, I guess it's in one of the linked articles) talks about "shooting at people like they are rabbits" - well, no, apparently rabbits were doing more than fine in the area of Berlin Wall.I wonder if they are in the game...

Those people who are angered are relatives of people who died trying to cross. Remembering something doesn't mean turning it into an entertainment.Especially a game. Bear in mind that not only is this a lot closer to home to the Germans, so is gaming. That country is nuts for board games and strategy based computer games.

Give this fellow a medal. I am furious when I hear USA-kids tell me (Euro-fag) that without them I would speak German. When you ask these same kids how they feel about the Jap-camps the USA had in those days they look at you as if they see water burn. They haven't been thought that part of history. Same here in the Netherlands. We are being thought about Anne Frank. The famous Jewish girl. We aren't being told about that the Dutch had one of the highest degrees of telling on people who where hiding those Anne's... And there are many, many more examples of this. So give this guy a medal for putting history as it should be... the way it was.

I like George Carlin's confusion feeling pride based on nationality and not what you, as an individual, did. The less you did as an individual, the more you have to delve finding security and reassurance in what you are. If WW2 taught anything, imo, it was individualism over collectivism in terms of judging others.

The interesting line which stopped at Germany was because the allies and the soviets reached there at pretty much the same time. If the Allies didn't have enough troops then it'd be likely that the line would have been pushed back even further.

That said, the importance of the US during the war is greatly essagerated by the media. During the cold war movies which DIDN'T portray the US as 'saving the world' were deemed possibly-communist and banned or worse.

You do realize that words are just sounds, or squiggles on a page or screen, right? The instant that it was obvious that the Krauts were whipped, the Russkis changed from enemies-of-our-enemies to just plain old enemies. The Cold War kicked off before WWII even ended.

I am furious when I hear USA-kids tell me (Euro-fag) that without them I would speak German. When you ask these same kids how they feel about the Jap-camps the USA had in those days they look at you as if they see water burn

Yeah well, I'm of the opinion that without the USA a lot of people would be speaking German, but the world traded one kind of evil for another when the USA became so very powerful as a result of waiting to enter the conflict. What box do you put me in?

So give this guy a medal for putting history as it should be... the way it was.

Amen. Your character gets to be tried for war crimes. It's not like they send you a coupon for a free blowjob if you successfully defend the virtual wall.

Actually, I was taught about the Japanese internment camps in high school. On a side note, I think I remember the teacher noting that it wouldn't have been as bad if the Germans and Italians were put in camps too, since it "wouldn't have been racist" or something like that. Years later I learned that they were put in camps, albeit in much smaller numbers. Interestingly enough, a number of German internment camps were kept open until 1948. This was because the camps mixed members of the German-American Bund (a pro-Nazi German-American culture organization) with non-Bund Germans, prompting fears that the camps were becoming Bund recruitment and training grounds. And so the camps were kept open out of fear of releasing a bunch of Nazis into the streets. Meanwhile, the Italians were let out in 1943, after the Italian surrender, and most of the Japanese were let out in early 1945, before the war was even over (with the exception of at least one camp with detainees from Peru that was open until some time in 1946).

I didn't compare them to the end-solution of the Nazi's... But let's be honest... there were only a couple of Auswitches and a lot of 'nazi interim'-camps... But's that a whole other discussion I guess. Kids should know about these things, because it has happened. And these days kids don't know abou these things. It's a shame really. You can't tell history when you leave a part out. History comes in a complete package. Useless in parts.

Same here in the Netherlands. We are being thought about Anne Frank. The famous Jewish girl. We aren't being told about that the Dutch had one of the highest degrees of telling on people who where hiding those Anne's

tell us more about how your government indoctrinated you to think the Americans are comparable to the Germans in order to feel less guilty about European history.

Can you imagine how they'd look at you if you showed them a picture of all of the happy Americans at a good ol' fashion lynching?

Seriously, comparatively few Germans were involved in the Death Camps and the whole country has been punishing itself ever since.

We had whole towns taking smiling pictures of themselves next to the hung and burned corpse of some unfortunate who used the wrong bathroom - and all we do is shrug and say to ourselves 'Oh those silly Southerners'. (Wait... that picture was taken in Chicago, well, let's just ignore that, shall we?)

The holocaust started before the war went bad. Many of the concentration camps were for slave labor, not killing so they actually supported the war effort. Also the holocaust wasn't people starving to death (though that happened), it was about systematic execution.

BUT it puts a dent in the unquestionable goodness, power, strength and general white-knight-ness that people often proclaim for their country. This sin is not peculiar to Americans, but it is widespread in the US. And China I think, which is much more of a case of cognitive dissonance.

It's important to remember these things, learn from them, and try not to take such actions in future.

Yes, why don't you learn about them? While the concept of the Japanese internment was morally and ethically wrong, the camps themselves were run as humanely as any POW camp according to and in excess of the standards of the Geneva Convention. The Japanese were housed and fed in the same manner as those guarding them. They were given medical attention if and when they needed it, once again to the same standard as that given to the camp administration itself. They were not forced to involuntary labor, there w

If this game is about people crossing the Berlin Wall, wouldn't 150 km (or whatever the exact length was) be more appropriate? Technically west Berlin wasn't even part of the FRG-- it was a foreign occupation zone deep within the borders of the GDR.

Guess I must have missed that, even though I am an (oft mentioned) resident of the Federal Republic. Hang on, when I am in Hugendubel (a big bookstore) later on this morning I will read Der Speigel (a magazine invented by the British armed forces post war) and feel myself filled to overflowing with outrage and indignation at what these dashed computer boffins are up to now.

I bet it wasn't as big of a controversy as JFK Reloaded [wikipedia.org].
You could play the sniper and replay various scenarios. With bullet time. Pieces of skull flying thru the air.
The game modeled bullet trajectory thru objects including body guards.
Needless to say the powers that be saw that this game never became mainstream. At the time it even vanished from pirate sites. Time has dulled that I guess, but if mainstream press got hold of the fact it is resurrected...
Short review with Underdogs download link: h [cool.com.au]

I scrolled down to the comments on there and nearly guffawed... those are among the most ridiculous comments I've seen on an internet article. Some really stupid people in Australia I guess;)

Still, thanks for the link - I remember that game. I tried to play a demo version of it (or something) back before it was released, but remember not being able to get it to go past the menus - and then I never heard anything about it again (and forgot about it) until now.

While the project is based upon a gaming engine, and is "set up" as a classical game, the whole intention of the project differs totally from what is widely found as the "definition of gaming". (which is: having fun by pushing buttons to move dumb objects on a screen)

The basic concept here is to use a computer game as a media or communication platform, to use it educationally - and to use it to make people remember the BAD things that happened in history.

And you know, it works. People here in germany did not discuss the Mauer shootings for several years on such a broad base for years, and now it's all over public media again - which is basically even MORE than the author of the work could have hoped to gain with it, but it was exactly what was on his mind - maybe on a smaller scale.

In general, it's time that public opinion recognizes games as more than "a funnny thing to relax". It's an art form, it's about communication, socializing, and live in general. The understanding of a "game concept" finally has to change, but I think this will come with the next generations, who understand a "computer game" not only as an evolved version of "Pong".

... accusing the game's creator, it's better to accuse the leaders and the people who allowed these things to happen back then. If they don't want similar games to exist, then they should not have allowed these actions to happen in the first place. I think the same applies to this [slashdot.org].